The noted eccentric Lord Berners had the idea of dyeing the white doves and pigeons at his family seat, Faringdon, in Oxfordshire, magenta, copper green and ultramarine. As his brilliantly-hued creatures fluttered about, visitors experienced moments of surreal, almost hallucinogenic beauty, prompting the more simple-minded to request eggs, assuming the colours were genetic.

(Nancy Mitford borrowed the idea for her novel The Pursuit of Love, describing the birds as “like a cloud of confetti in the sky”.)

Berners was so pleased with his experiment he proceeded to dye his swans and ducks, then his pair of white bull terriers – one pink, one green. His attempts to get local farmers to dye their cattle purple, however, were less successful.

Gardens and animals have gone hand in paw since the serpent was advising Eve in the Garden of Eden. Since before that, in fact, for prior to making Eve, God had already fashioned “every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air” to keep Adam company. Not surprisingly, most artists present Eden as a menagerie, teeming with as much fauna as flora.

Britain, of course, while not short of native species of animals and birds, suffers from the fact that most tend to be smallish, brownish and largely indistinguishable to the not-especially-interested layman, certainly when compared to their continental or equatorial cousins. Most also display a marked preference for emerging only at night.

The gardener’s response has been twofold. First, we simply imported more interesting species. Goldfish had arrived from China by 1665 (we learn from Samuel Pepys); soon after, Canada geese were added by James II to his waterfowl collection in St James’s Park. The expanding British Empire gave access to all kinds of offbeat animals and birds, and soon everything from elephants and tigers to penguins and flamingoes were being enthusiastically shipped back to stock the world’s first zoo at Regent’s Park in London.

The trickle-down effect meant Indian peacocks were soon strutting the lawns of English country houses, with Chinese muntjac (introduced by the 11th Duke of Bedford) grazing their parks. Aviaries and butterfly houses became novelty garden features in Victorian and Edwardian Britain, as orangeries had been in the 18th century.

Mandarin ducks from Asia and ruddy ducks from America decorated ornamental sheets of water. Hawks and falcons preened on tree-stumps, rattling their chains.

In general, however, notwithstanding Longleat’s lions, British taste errs towards the cute rather than the scary. We have a soft spot for robins, hedgehogs, bumble bees, pine martens and red squirrels.

Partly this is the result of the unremitting anthropomorphising of our animals by English children’s literature, especially its so-called golden age between Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Winnie-the-Pooh. For more than a century the Western imagination has grown up on stories about white rabbits with pocket watches, frogs which go fishing, car-mad toads and hedgehogs with names like Mrs Tiggywinkle or Monty Woodpig.

It’s a weakness that has occasionally backfired on us, as imported animals take over, most spectacularly with the introduction of the North American grey squirrel, the first pair at Henbury Park, Cheshire, by a Mr Brocklehurst in 1876. Few now disagree that the “rat with PR”, along with its more recent sidekick, the green and yellow ring-necked parakeet (released in London just 40 years ago), belong on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s list of most invasive species in need of control.

Our solution to the shyness problem of our indigenous animals has been to feed them. The sixth-century monk, Saint Serf of Fife, is the first person recorded to have tamed a robin by feeding. By the harsh winter of 1890-91, British national newspapers were asking people to put out food for birds, and by 1910 Punch was declaring that feeding birds was a “national pastime”. Today, the bird feed industry is worth £400 million a year.

In this, the British cult of the amateur naturalist has played its part. The idea of the patient, gentle, tweedy observer, usually a gardener and often an artist, in his cottage paradise is a beguiling one. The type was firmly established in the 18th century by Gilbert White, who wrote The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne. It reached its apogee in Edwardian England with men like Edward Hudson and the Victorian statesman Sir Edward Grey, who was an avid ornithologist.

How times have changed. Once, when the world was fierce and wild, gardens were safe places to admire its wonders.

Today, it’s the once wild places that are fragile and threatened, and the garden has become the final resort for such once-common creatures as the sparrow, starling and honey bee. Gardeners are urged to grow meadow flowers, plant butterfly-loving shrubs, and hang nesting boxes, to encourage the creatures that agri-business has dispensed with. It’s no longer dyed birds that are interesting; it’s any birds at all.

Antony Woodward’s The Garden in the Clouds was a winner of the 2011 Hay Festival National Trust Outdoors Books of the Year. For tickets to The Telegraph Hay Festival 2012, see hayfestival.com.